Mexican authorities detained 104 illegal immigrants, including women and children, who had been stuffed in a tractor trailer to get them past a military checkpoint.

The discovery took place Saturday night near the town of Hidalgo at the military checkpoint known as Oyama, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the Tamaulipas government revealed. The region is about one hour north of Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas.

At the checkpoint, military personnel inspected a tractor trailer that was expected to travel from the state of Veracruz to Linares, Nuevo Leon. Inside of the tractor trailer, military personnel moved a series of pallets to discover the 104 illegal immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Ecuador.

The groups was made up of 62 men, 21 women and 21 teenagers and children under18-years of age. The driver of the tractor trailer was arrested and turned over to federal authorities while the illegal immigrants were turned over to Mexican immigration authorities.

Human smuggling has become a profitable enterprise for Mexican drug cartels. During the summer of 2014 Mexico’s Gulf Cartel made approximately $38 million in the summer months, Breitbart Texas reported.

According to information provided to Breitbart Texas by Mexican authorities, the weekend smuggling attempt is connected to the Los Zetas cartel. Veracruz and Nuevo Leon, the states where the group of illegal immigrants was moving to and from are areas that have been under Zeta control for years.

As Breitbart Texas recently reported, U.S. Border Patrol agents are reporting a sharp increase in the number of illegal immigrants entering the country through south Texas. While most of the illegal immigrants being detained by U.S. authorities are adult males, authorities have also noted a steady increase in children and teenagers who make up about 15 percent of the total apprehensions. The number of illegal immigrants entering through Texas is expected to surpass the number of detentions recorded in 2015.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.